1.15 Billion Handset units sold in 2007

Handset sales hit 1.15 billion units in 2007, up 16 per cent on 2006, said Gartner.
The market watcher added that fourth quarter sales reached 330 million units. However, it expects growth in 2008 to slow to about 10 per cent as mature markets become saturated.

Among manufacturers Nokia achieved its target of 40 per cent market share in the fourth quarter of 2007 when it sold slightly more than 133 million phones. Nokia increased its market share in all regions except North America.

Motorola sold 39 million phones to take second spot with 14.3 per cent of the market.

But this was down from 21.1 per cent in 2006. And, by 4th quarter, Motorola was behind Samsung, which surged past it thanks to strong sales of its Ultra and Ultra II family of products. Samsung increased its yearly market share to 13.4 per cent.

Sony Ericsson ended 2007 a quarterly share of nine per cent and robust Walkman and Cyber-shot brands. LG's sales totalled 23.5 million units in 4Q to grab 7.1 per cent market share. It increased quarterly sales by three million.

Sales of all the handset manufacturers had increased except Motorola and Moto is expected to continue to lose more market share and it wont be surprising that Sony Ericsson and LG will overtake them in 2008. The Moto brand is lowly perceived at the present moment and they need more than a miracle to crawl their way back into the competition. The strength of emerging market demand meant that handset sales were likely to be “relatively immune to a recession” in the US and western Europe.

Strong sales in China and India lifted Chinese handset supplier ZTE into top ten for the first time with a 1.2% market share. But the popularity of high-end BlackBerry and iPhone devices also put smartphone vendors RIM and Apple in the top ten. Taiwan’s BenQ, France’s Sagem and China-based Bird were the three displaced from the top group.

The World of Social Networks

An interesting map of the leading social network in the world and their dominance in each region, courtesy of Le Monde. While Facebook and MySpace are the major leading social networks getting most of the media exposure, you will find from this map that they are not leading in every region.

Discover the world of counterfeits in Shanghai

This is a good video clip produced by Ms Angela Sun dated September 19, 2005 that explains it all in a nutshell. It's worth watching though you may think its outdated. The situation in China hasnt changed pretty much as counterfeiting is still as rampant as before. Click on this link to the video.

While its a serious problem in China, dont think the authority care too much either even with the big outcry coming from the international brand owners. With Beijing Olympics around the corner, its definitely not good for China PR positioning. The authority may swing into action to clamp down just before the Games and after the Games, i m sure its going to be business as usual for the counterfeit peddlers. As long as there is a demand from the buyers, its going to be hard to stop the counterfeiters unless if the authority comes down hard on it.

Many of you would think that the Chinese goverment are not capable in combatting piracy, in reality, there isnt any thing that the government are not capable of doing. As a proof, if you live in major cities in China, try look around for a counterfeit Olympics merchandises, believe me its hard to find and even if they are people doing them, its really marketed on a very small scale. Olympics is a national project and it will surely hurt their ego and pride if such counterfeit merchandises are found all over the place.

Linkedin on Mobile

After all the long wait and anxiety, Linkedin is finally on mobile. Wonder what it had taken them so long. Just enter m.linkedin.com on your mobile browser or your iPhone and it will take you directly to the optimized mobile version of linkedin. I had tried both on my N95 and iPhone and i must credit their developers for a well done job as the initial user experience on both my phones had been good. Infact its better on the iPhone with some resemblance UI of facebook. I m sure their developers must had taken some ideas from iPhone's facebook UI.

The mobile version will surely help to further accelerate the growth of linkedin. The regular website has been on a roll for the past one year, nearly tripling in unique visitors in the US to 3.6 million in January 2008, according to comScore.

A LinkedIn enginner, Jerry Luk gives a demo of the new mobile service with this YouTube video.

China is the Largest Instant Noodle market in the World

Instant noodles is what i been having frequently whenever i m lazy to cook or i have little time to comprehend cooking. Its so convenient and to some local chinese, its their way of life. The idea of adding hot water and to wait for few minutes for the noodles to be cooked can be so compelling and practical. Such compelling and practical factors had led China to become the largest instant noodles market in the world. Its probably the single most important item that most households in China will carry in their kitchen.

Dont underestimate that little packed food. It has a market estimated at $6.6 billion and will double to $13 billion in 2012 and all players are scrambling for market share and brand recognition. Its consumers spend around $5 per capita per year on instant noodles, according to Euromonitor International.

The packaging is appealing and what makes it more appealing is that its relatively very cheap ranging from RMB 1 - 5 ($0.14 - o.70) per pack. So how can noodle manufacturers get a piece of the action? Product development, advertising and distribution appear to be key, according to players and experts. The core to instant noodles business is brand management.

Increasing brand recognition is crucial and total advertising spending promoting instant noodles in China in 2006 alone amounted to $237.4 million, a 19 percent jump from the previous year, according to Nielsen.

Despite the size of the market, China's noodle industry is dominated by one company: Taiwan-founded Tingyi. Its Master Kong brand commands a lofty 43.3 percent share. Its closest rival, Japanese joint venture Nissin Hualong, has 14.2 percent, followed by Uni-President with 10.5 percent, according to CIMB-GK.

I had tried most of the brands here but my favorite is still the Master Kong's label which explain why they are in such dominant position in China. At the end of the day, while branding can play a huge buying factor, whats more important is how good its when you eat it. All the brandings in the world isnt going to help you sell rotten apples.

Google Search on your Mobile in 20 seconds

A new Google search application for Nokia phones makes getting to the search box and receiving results much faster. The application shortcut is embedded on the phone’s idle homescreen, so you can search without launching a browser.

This application is available now to anyone who has an N-series or an E-series Nokia phone, and can be downloaded by going to mobile.google.com on your phone. Google said the application reduces the average time to complete a search by up to 40 percent. A side-by-side search comparison is provided in this video below.

Mobile Phone Projectors are coming out soon

I blogged about this technology sometime ago but it was only a prototype. The latest news is that it has just gone into production and soon mobile device will come with a micro projector sometime mid 2008. That would be neat right. In the future we can just fire up over mobile and do our presentation instantly.

Top 25 largest companies in the world

The above is the latest top 25 largest companies in the world by market capitalization. Just 3 months ago citigroup was the 13th largest company but now they are not even within the top 50.

Google on the other hand has surged to No 18. For a company thats under 10 years old from the day it started business, its just amazing.

Check out below for the top 25 list that was reported back in October 2007.

$14.3 million for a license plate

What can you get for $14.3 million in the old rich Arab Emirates? Just a plain car license plate with No 1 printed on it. Not as if its made of gold or platinum embedded with diamonds. Its just a plain simple license plate evidently presented above with the label No. 1.

Guess the rich Arabs are going after vanity plates now in a world record fashion. The old world record was held by other rich Arab, stock broker Talal Khouri who had bought it for $6.8 million in an auction.

Frankly i see nothing more than just pure ego and a way of showing off. They can certainly put such good money to better use. If Bill Gates and Warren Buffett could give all their hard earned wealth for the good of humanity, I cant see why the Arabs cant do the same from the wealth that they had acquired from the natural resources of the world. They should give back more from what they had taken underneath the earth.

I m sure the black gold can be put to better use than just shattering world records, from trying to build the world's tallest building, world's biggest man made island, and now breaking the world's most expensive license plate!!! How about breaking the record for uniting the whole Arab...

400,000 of cracked iPhones in China

Believe it or not, there are more than 400,000 units of cracked iPhones in China. This figure alone is morethan the legitimate iPhones that had been sold so far in the whole of Europe. In fact iPhones had been found in the gray market as early as July 2007 immediately it was launched in the US. Enterprising and creative businessmen saw this as an opportunity and had since been shipping in sizeable quantities into all parts of China. iPhones were priced as high as RMB 7,000-8,000 (US$ 970-1,110) initially. Now its about Rm4,500 (US$ 625) and its still selling like hotcakes.

Even though iPhone was never officially launched anyway in Asia, but you can almost find many people using here in China. I have bought 2 iPhones from the US and had since be happily using it in China. They are many people here who would love to get their hands on iPhone had it been priced more competitively and also minus the trouble of having to unblock them. I wonder why Apple had taken so long to sort out their business arrangement in China. It will definitely make more sense for Apple to have iPhone presence here as the market is ready from day 1 for a product like iPhone.

At the price of US$399 or RMB 2,873, Apple will floor almost all the mobile manufacturers in China especially in the smartphone segment. According to InStat China, 20% of handsets sold in China are priced above the RMB 4,000 bracket, ie, a potential 28 million mobile device market for iPhone. Apple could just single their advertising effort into this market and they will have accomplish their 10 million sales target for 2008.

If i were Steve, I will restrategise and start all over negotiating with China Mobile, I m sure there must be another way to tickle China Mobile. Surely China Mobile wants to increase its mobile internet usage or subscriber base, and iPhone has certainly proven this by increasing 50 times in terms of mobile internet traffic to Google. How about a deal with China Mobile on mobile music, iTunes has yet to find its way into China?

Device manufacturers should learn something from these data and how iPhone has changed the whole mobile design landscape. AT&T's CEO has called iPhone as a "Game Changer" and I strongly believe not only that it has changed the game but it has also started a whole new evolution in mobile internet creating an universe of many possibilities.

Source : InStat China

Intra-China Roaming Charges reduced more than 60%

Its been in discussion for a while now and MII had made May 1 2008 as the absolute deadline to be implemented by all the operators. Most operators will be implementing by 1st March. The usual rates of RMB 1.30-1.50 per minute will be reduced to RMB 0.60 for making the call and RMB 0.40 for receiving the call.

Its some progress but many had hoped that both call charges for intra-China roaming and receiving calls will be abolished. I m always of the opinion that callers should be paying for making the calls. Why are the Operators penalising the receiving end for calls that arent made by them. On top of that why even roaming in the 1st place? China is supposed to be one country and users are supposed to have access to their mobile regardless of where they are located in China.

Dont Talk on the Phone while Driving

This may not be the best advertisement on earth but it clearly sent an effective message. This is a hazard of mobile phone which one should avoid and its never smart to be either talking or worst still trying to send a text message while driving. Think before you text or talk on the phone the next time you are on the wheel.

I finally Jailbroken my iPhone

I finally got my dead iPhone revived after more than a month waiting. It was a terrible mistake that i had accidentally upgraded it to version 1.1.3 the day it was released. I thought i was smart enough to jailbreak it but i was totally wrong. The phone went dead immediately after the upgrade. Since then i have been looking and searching high and low all over the internet for the unlock code. There were many that i had tried but the one that cracked it was ZiPhone developed by Zibri.

It was not easy cracking it initially as there were little instructions and i tried for hours and came with nothing. Almost gave up until one of the reader gave the last bit of clue to the unlocking secret and I finallly managed to jailbreak my iPhone.

To save the agony for those of you who has a dead iPhone lying around or even for those who just bought a new iPhone, you can use this method to unlock or jailbreak your iPhone. Its really as what Zibri has said, its a "REAL" jailbreaker and not some kind of software updates. AnySIM, TurboSIM and NextSIM not required! Just slip in any SIM cards and it will work.

This is what you do :

1. Go to Zibri's site to download the ZiPhone software (by the way, Zibri had just updated with latest version 1.2 which is supposed to be a cracker but i have not tried it yet). I was using just version 1.1.

2. Once downloaded, extract the file into a folder and run a command prompt.

3. Plug in your iPhone and make sure its on recovery mode before you run the ZiPhone program. To run your iPhone in recovery mode, make sure your iPhone is powered off completely. Press and hold on to the iPhone home button and at the same time plug it into your PC and wait for iTunes to boot up. Remember, to continue pressing onto the home button until you see on iTunes that your iPhone is in recovery mode.

4. Once you are in recovery mode, go to the command prompt. At the command prompt, (make sure you are on the right ZiPhone folder) type in ziphone -a -j -u -v and press enter. Once you click on enter, it will immediately search for your iPhone and will do all the rest of the magic. Not to worry if you see a very long list of words, letters, numbers and sentences appearing on your iPhone. All this will take about 2-3 minutes. Just wait for your iPhone to reboot and you will see " enjoy your unlocked iphone" appearing and you have just jailbroken your ipphone.

Its really that simple. Thank you Zibri. By the way i had freshly restored my phone via iTunes before jailbreaking it and kept iTunes running all the time. The whole process was really a breeze. If you have problem, drop me a comment. All the best....

2 billion of text messages are expected to be sent everyday during Spring Festival

More than 17 billion text messages are expected to be sent during Spring Festival, a possible new record, according to the Ministry of Information Industry (MII). The projection means a 12-percent rise from the 15.2 billion of last Spring Festival. Thats more than 2 billion of text messages a day! Its a rainfall for the Chinese Operators who will make about RMB 1.7 billion based on a RMB 0.10 per message.

MII statistics showed the Chinese cell phone users have sent 592.1 billion text messages last year, with a daily volume of more than 1.6 billion. Calculated at the lowest cost of RMB 0.10 per message, the service has generated a daily revenue of RMB 160 million (22.2 million U.S. dollars) for the Chinese operators. Thats close to RMB 60 billion of revenue on text messages alone! Don't expect this figure to stop growing as there is an average of 8 million subscribers registering in China every month. Mind boggling ain't it?

Is this the best Motorola can do?

No wonder Motorola is in so much mess, just take a look at the 2 models they launched at MWC 2008, Barcelona and you will agree that Motorola is just going nowhere. I wonder what had happened to their design team. Surely they must have some people working on better and well designed model than the 2 crappy looking models that they had just launched.

Just compare that we what their competitors have to offer, Motorola should seriously consider doing something drastic or just exit the device business. MWC is the world biggest mobile event and its sad to see such poor design coming from Motorola.

Sony Ericsson showcased their new Xperia X1.

Nokia hits the stage with N96 and N78.

LG debuts 3 new models - KF510, the KF600 and KF700.

Nokia launches Nokia Media Network

Nokia today announced the launch of the global Nokia Media Network, a premium advertising network including over 70 leading publisher and operators as well as Nokia media properties. AccuWeather, Discovery, Hearst, Reuters, and Sprint have joined with Nokia to form the first global mobile ad network of top tier publishers. Nokia Media Network’s wide reach of the most desirable mobile audience is yielding click-through rates averaging 10% in certain channels, the highest reported response rates in the industry.

“Nokia is building upon an unrivaled understanding of the mobile consumer, our relationships with blue chip publishers and top tier operators, and a legacy of campaign optimization through analytics to create a high-performing solution for advertisers,” said Vice President and Head of Nokia Interactive, Mike Baker. “The biggest brands in the world trust us with their mobile advertising because they know the Nokia Media Network enables them to reach the largest, highest quality audience on mobile and provides the best ROI.”

Nokia enables advertisers to place ads on high quality and brand-safe publisher and operator mobile Web pages, as well as Nokia properties, representing an unprecedented global consumer reach – more than 100 million mobile consumers around the globe. As part of the turn-key service for advertisers, the award-winning mobile marketing team from Nokia creates mobile campaigns for hundreds of top brands, including BMW, Paramount, and MobiTV.

Source : Nokia's Press Office

Almost identical iPhone twin

The real iPhone HiPhone

Its the closest mirror image of iPhone that I had seen so far and of course its made none other than in China. At first glance, anybody would had thought that its a regular iPhone but on a closer inspection, you will be able to see that its an "almost" identical twin to iPhone. It carries the "HiPhone" name with the Apple logo embedded on the back on the phone. And best still, even the packaging looks almost identical.

It comes with quite a few extra features that you wont even find it on the iPhone. Of course the extra features arent going to bring the powerful "real" iPhone to the ground. Here are some of the extra features on HiPhone :

- Dual SIM slots that holds two SIM chips

- Full messaging capabilities including MMS

- MP3, MP4, file playing, recording, phone call recording

- Full Video capabilities

- TF card supported
- All the above for the price of $239 or RMB 1720 (a regular gray market iPhone in China is about RMB 4500)

Not bad for a clone and of course it comes "unlocked" (haha). I m not recommending it to you but it goes to show how far the Chinese manufacturers are prepared to go to reap off a good product in China. Not only will they do in record speed, they will reap it off and improve over the original product.

Photo 1 Photo 2

Photo 3

Can you figure out which of the 3 shots are genuine Apple product? Let me give you a clue, 2 of those are fakes.

Check out the clip below for a complete informercial of HiPhone. This was probably the only aspect where they failed to copy the iPhone, no tv commercial.

What do you expect during the winter of 2079?

The video depicts winter in the year 2079 and all should expect to see bleak, snow covered imagery, instead................,


..........we are presented with a hip pool party complete with bikinied booty, ample breasts, hard abs and six packs. You would had guessed it right, its global warming and it has eliminated winter! Interesting global warming campaign.

Consumers prefer SmartPhones

According to a ChangeWave Consumer Mobile Phone Survey, a huge number of consumers are upgrading their phones to more-advanced smartphone models. Research In Motion and Apple appear to be the primary beneficiaries of this new paradigm shift towards smartphones. Apple iPhone is now the top choice among consumers planning to buy a new mobile phone in the next six months (up one point to 17%), but second-place RIM has the most momentum (up three points to 15%).

Apple also maintained its big industry lead in customer satisfaction compared with the other major manufacturers: 72% of respondents having reported that they are very satisfied with their iPhone. RIM is a strong second with 55% having said that they are very satisfied.

What about Motorola?

In short, Motorola is doomed. Motorola who used to dominate has declined another four points in terms of future planned purchases, continuing an inevitable slide that began immediately after Apple CEO Steve Jobs' initial announcement regarding the iPhone. As the above chart shows, Motorola's share of future planned purchases has plummeted during the past 12 months and its highly unlikely that it will rise again in the short to mid-term and maybe not even in the long term.

So, its really not a bad news for Motorola to finally call it a day for its mobile division and focus on other areas. Problem is who is going to buy them...

A further sign that the US economy is slowing down is reflected through the weaker overall consumer mobile phone buying environment below. Only 23% of respondents said they'll purchase or upgrade their cell phone during the next six months. That's three points less than at any other point during the past year.

This maybe a US centric survey but it certainly has a bearing on some of the region. In some region, the adoption of smartphones had taken off quite a while ago. A good example would be China, Japan and Korea where most mobile users have access to a powerful wireless device allowing them communicate and staying connected over the internet.


The global trend is certainly heading that direction and I cant see why the US will not. They may have taken a while to realise the real power of mobile phone and its clear from the survey, the adoption rate will only speed up.

Monster NOKIA Made in China

This has to be monster clone Nokia i had seen in China. I was lucky to have stumbled onto this unit while having dinner with one of my local friend in China. It carries a replica logo of Nokia but on a closer inspection, NOKIA is being spelled as NCKIA. The "C" was designed in such a way that it looks almost like an "O".

The phone is priced under RMB 2,000 and carries alot of features including touch screen. It has 4 speakers that provided the monster music scream. Its extra large screen size provides a great way to watch mobile analog TV, another built in feature.

With the big brands having a huge market share in China, the local legal and illegal manufacturers have to think alot harder to sell its devices. Not an easy market as many are struggling to break even in this half a billion mobile market.

Six tips to Yahoo how to negotiate with Microsoft

Shpigler the Shark provides simple negotiating tips to Yahoo how they can corner Microsoft. Really simple and hilarious.

Nokia runaway leader in China with Samsung overtaking Motorola

Samsung has passed Motorola as China’s second biggest mobile phone vendor, while Sony Ericsson’s market share halved over 2007, says research firm Analysys International.

Of the 39.96 million devices sold in the last quarter of 2007, Samsung shipped 13.2% and Motorola 11.7%. A year earlier, Motorola had 24.1% of the market and Samsung 9.0%, according to Analysys.

Sony Ericsson’s market share slipped from 7.4% in 2006 to 3.8% in Q4 2007. Nokia remains the runaway leader, 35.3% of the market, up from 33.6% a year earlier.

Total handset sales grew 18.9% from the previous year. Everybody is chipping away the market share of Motorola which had gone south since beginning of last year and their miseries are not entirely over as Motorola had indicated an intentiont to unload the money losing handset business globally. With close to $20 billion of sales from its handset business, Motorola is still bleeding profusely.

Everything has gone so wrong for Motorola and its sad to see the creator of the 1st mobile phone heading this path. Its almost impossible for them to return to its heydays. The problem isnt just about the platform and the delay in coming out with new models, its down to lack of direction and internal management issues and these are problems that are hard to solve. Its surely a brilliant case study for all of us to learn. If we cant get our internal act together, dont bother with achieving anything external.

N-Gage off the block

After several false starts, Nokia finally released its revamped N-Gage mobile platform. Currently available exclusively on N81 devices, N-Gage remains in trial mode, but three titles are now available--Space Impact: Kappa Base, System Rush: Evolution and Hooked On: Creatures of the Deep.

You are encourage to download at the N-Gage First Access website if you have the following devices announced as N-Gage compatible: Nokia N81, Nokia N81 8GB, Nokia N73, Nokia N82, Nokia N93, Nokia N93i, Nokia N95, and the Nokia N95 8GB. I m in the midst of downloading it to test it on my N95. Let me know what you think.

Lenovo Mobile exiting the business for $100 million

What do you do when you have 6% of the mobile phone market share in China? You exit business. This is exactly what Lenovo just did this week. The had decided to exit the money losing mobile phone business to continue focusing on their profitable PC business.

What happened to the myth of companies who just wanted 1% of the market share in China? This is certainly 1 point to prove that doing business in China isnt easy at all especially in the crowded mobile phone business. Foreign firms dominate at the high-end of the market with advanced models, and also have the scale to offer low prices at the market entry-level, leaving the 80 or more licensed domestic manufacturers to slug it out in the mid-range.

Lenovo sold their mobile phone arm for $100 millon after a disastrous quarter in which sales fell 31%. Even with 6% market share, Lenovo Mobile had made a loss of 133.7 million yuan in the year ended December 31, 2007, compared with 426 million yuan profit in 2006 thanks to a sharp 31% drop in sales in the last quarter. Tough business aint it?

Another crappy iPhone clone from China

Discovered a new crappy iPhone clone while watching a TV informersial. Its a clear case of design and trademark infringement and guess what its all taking place on national TV. Its a sub-par quality knock-off iPhone clone and it was branded as My Phone.

It looks like an iPhone at first glance. It has a touchscreen but phone is noticeably thicker, has a iPhone look-alike User interface and comes with look-alike Apple logo on the back. In fact this little crappy device comes with a few additional features not available on the real iPhone.

You can shake the phone to pick up the call and it even comes with an add-on solar charger to recharge the phone battery in the event if you cant find any powerpoint. Guess what all this with a bluetooth headset thrown in for the price of $160 including shipping to your address within China. I wonder whats the real cost of the phone as I m sure it needs to be low enough to have a massive profit margin to cover the cost of advertising on national TV.

Discover the Power of Google Map

Imagine Google Map having the abilities to do this, I m sure they will go out of business. It certainly had opened up the many possibilities of location searches and I m sure the search results are just going to get better and better. Enjoy the clip.

Mobile browsing near perfection with SkyFire

Mobile users will be pleased to hear that they will soon be able to browse the web on a mobile device as they would on a PC. The SkyFire browser, tipped to be one of the best browser on mobile and I m sure it will change the whole mobile browsing experience once you watch the video clip below. It supports Flash video, Java and Quicktime, and features a manageable interface similar to the desktop browser we have all been familiar with and best of all, its been designed to cater for the small screen on our mobile phone.

You can watch online video on sites like YouTube, Dailymotion and Break or listen to music on Last.fm, Rhapsody or Yahoo. You can also take your social networking up to the next level with Facebook and Myspace, and browse for all the latest weather, news, Google Maps and sports results. Its an amazing product and I cant wait to have the Symbian version on my mobile as its scheduled to be released this year. It will blow away all the existing mobile browsers including my favorite Opera Mini.

SkyFire is currently available for free beta download from www.skyfire.com for Windows Mobile OS devices.

Microsoft bidding $44.6 Billion for Yahoo

Microsoft announced Friday a $44.6 billion cash and stock offer to acquire beleaguered Yahoo, a deal that would consolidate the web's largest portal with MSN, the fifth-largest. Microsoft's $31 per-share bid represents a 62 percent premium over Yahoo's closing stock price on Thursday. If ratified, the acquisition would herald the biggest Internet deal since the Time Warner/AOL merger, and create a viable threat to the growing web search and advertising supremacy of mutual rival Google.

The acquisition should had taken place a long time ago and in fact both companies had discussed about this in late 2006 but nothing was materialised. As a combined company, this will fit in nicely for Microsoft who had made little impact online. I m sure together as a company, they will be able to combine to focus resources that drive innovation in emerging scenarios such as video, mobile services, online commerce, social media, and social platform that should at least provide the competition needed to Google. What do you think?